cheats in OOLITE a traders viewpoint

[Dawn Trader]

What is a cheat in OOLITE?
This is not a discourse of a frustrated player but a player who has been told by various others that certain things that I have are cheats.
Here is a story that illuminates in small what is happening in OOLITE:
Back in the bad old days, the cops were armed with .38 service specials that worked just fine until certain criminal elements got possession of Thompson machine guns that shoot a .45 bullet at 500 rounds a minute. The cops naturally cried “Foul!!! That’s not fair to outgun us. After all, we are the good guys”. In their eyes, using a machine gun was cheating. To the criminals… it was the best of 2 worlds. They could route the cops and dominate their fellow criminals who haven’t geared up yet.
Now, I have 2 personas…. One is a trader, the other is a full bore adventurer who walks the thin line between legal and criminal activity.
The trader will go first:
I have a ship that is basically a floating target. In order to survive, I must slink through corridors of pirates who want what I have but don’t want to pay for it, fly the outer edges then make a mad dash and hope no one notices or I can be intuitive and see what technology is out there that I can use to defeat the pirates. I definitely do not want or need anything that puts me in harms way so weapons, missiles, bombs are out of the question. That leaves me to find something that devious and ingenious.
Cloaking devices are great but you gotta fight to get them… result is one dead trader.
Long range scanner: lets you see the disposition of all ships in your sphere of space… it is really nice to know where to bad guys are. Now the baddies are going to cry unfair as they are now effectively avoided and the trader gets to port sound and safe.
Long range planner: uses thargoid technology…. Uses no to little fuel to go beyond the 7 lyr limit. I actually go one further and fly with only ½ tank… then I can use it for closer planets. Sure beats witchspacing in, running for the sun to scoop… but wait 1 , I have no scoop (ship designed that way) so that means I gotta go back to slinking and skulking to avoid destruction. Forget about escorts… too tight to let the credits slip out of my fingers. Again use the scanner and slip in before the baddies know you are there. I can hear the baddies crying in their soup….. another one got away.. boo hoo hoo.
What about chaff? It defeats missiles…. Oh yah! In order to use chaff, you gotta be attacked… bad for me, good for them after all they have at least 10 different kinds of missiles, bombs and weapons to destroy players who don’t want to be destroyed or taken advantage of. They don’t even respond to token ejections of goods…. They want it all.
Galcop??? Their vipers are good but their performance in helping small traders is somewhat spotty at the best. They usually arrive too late to do anything useful. Where are they in an anarchy system?
The navy? Flying around them with pirates on your tail is no guarantee that you won’t be targeted also.
Convoy? The escorts usually ignore you even when their primary is attacked, after all, you aren’t paying them to tag along… you takes your risks and hope no one attacks.
Stand and fight? Send me to heaven in a glad bag. Unless you got a freighter that does at least .356, there is no outrunning the pirates.

[Okti]

What is a cheat in OOLITE?

For me a cheat in oolite is editing your save file.

[Smivs]

What is a cheat?
Well, anything that gives the player an unfair advantage by breaking/ignoring/circumventing the 'rules'.
That's the simple answer.
Vanilla Oolite is a very well-balanced game on the whole. A novice will find it very tough, a more experienced player will find it challenging and rewarding. An 'expert' player will find it far too easy, hence the OXPs that re-balance the game in favour of the NPCs such as my ToughGuys.
The problem usually comes when inappropriate OXPs are used. An 'average' player who finds the vanilla game a bit of a challenge sometimes (Anarchy and Feudal systems can be demanding even in the basic game for example) is well advised not to use OXPs that add more danger and hazards. This, I think, is common sense.
And this can lead to a stupid 'arms-race' where the player feels they have to start using 'cheat' OXPs to counter the changes they have made to their Ooniverse.
If you install OXPs that add all sorts of fancy missiles, and tougher ships, and more 'baddies' you should be confident that you can live in that Ooniverse. Just adding more OXPs that 'cheat' in your favour is not the solution. The solution is to remove the problem, not add to it.
With regard to LongRangeScanner and JumpPlanner, yes of course these are cheats. They were originally designed as aids to OXP developers, not for the normal game, and using them in the normal game is frankly ridiculous. It devalues the game to the point where you might as well not bother! It's like playing Football (or any ball game) where the ball has a magnet in it which carries it into the goal whatever you do!
LRS removes all the 'fun' of never quite knowing what you will meet next and the extra information it gives will affect the decisions the player makes about how they will handle a new System, to the detriment of the game. JP is a mega-cheat! Multiple system jumps without using fuel! Come on, for goodness sake, this completely destroys one of the cornerstones of the game.
Great tools for developers, but they really don't have a place in playing the game, and surely that's what it is all about, isn't it? Playing the Game.

[Okti]

As mentioned before, if there is a market for cheat oxp's, the download stats will say. LRS has been downloaded over 570 now, and some oxp authors apart from me are working on it to improve the function. I agree it is good for testing oxp's and have used it while coding some oxp's or testing.

But the best think about oolite is the players are free to load oxp's that suits their play style. And every player has a different game style and I do not really find posts made imposing their game styles to the other players helpfull.

There are choices for every game style and we are only trying to improve the options.

Okti

[Dawn Trader]

Thank you for your input. Your opinion is noted and I must consider these then as being cheats:
galpod drive used to get to "impossible" planets.
Wonderworm... an uber uber uber ship that is totally out of context for this game.
Gates: jumping from witch point to station without any intervention (kinda like long rang scanner but without the ability to see the items in space.) using NO fuel to get there. There are ships out there that are so fast.. nothing can touch them and time has to be slowed down inorder to do combat with them. that is "cheating".. who controls time stasis?

But then, Hey, as a trader, I have absolutely no use for these so I do not have them in my OOniverse.
Every player is in a parallel universe like pages in a book... each ooniverse has it's own properties and propensities. What is a cheat in one, is taken for granted in another but is diss players for what they use smacks of elitism. The purpose of this discourse is to see what other players think and to see what they use as a regular item but also what "cheat" items they employ. Maybe they use items in unique ways that can benefit another oonivers in a parallel manner.
I am no rocket scientist who can write oxps but if an oxp is written... it is meant to be used and to call it a cheat is to denigrate the author who thought it up and implimented it.
But Smivs, you ridicule a technology that uses no fuel because it is an alien technology say that the wonder worm has "interspatial" properties to greatly enlarge the interior of a vessel to hold more than 100 times it cargo limit is truly stretching the limits. I am happy that your creation is is accepted as an oxp or as a part of the shipset. You cannot have both the cracker and the jam then deny both as being real. thank you

[Thargoid]

To give some other OXP stats:

OoCheat - guess what that does... - 1302 downloads since 4th Oct 2010
Swarm - Much tougher Thargoid warships - 135 downloads since 11th January 2012
Vortex - uberShip - 1378 downloads since 26th September 2010
Second Wave - Again tougher warships - 1287 downloads since 20th November 2008
Gates (as it got specifically mentioned) - 2279 downloads since 13th November 2009

So for me the "cheat" OXPs are more popular than the "toughening" ones.

[Okti]

But Smivs, you ridicule a technology that uses no fuel because it is an alien technology say that the wonder worm has "interspatial" properties to greatly enlarge the interior of a vessel to hold more than 100 times it cargo limit is truly stretching the limits. I am happy that your creation is is accepted as an oxp or as a part of the shipset. You cannot have both the cracker and the jam then deny both as being real. thank you

Well wonder worm was a kind of joke oxp.

And the best thing is we can work together with others wilst not sharing the same game style to improve options for the players.

And seen the Thargoids stats now

[SandJ]

But the best think about oolite is the players are free to load oxp's that suits their play style. And every player has a different game style and I do not really find posts made imposing their game styles to the other players helpful.

But when a newbie is advised to use an immensely powerful tool that turns Oolite into a noddy trading-only game, it is a dis-service to them.

Elite was a successful game because it was necessary to learn how and when to fight, and it was necessary to learn how to trade. By making money too easy, or making fighting too easy, the game loses its long playability.

It is easy to earn millions of credits and buy an uber-ship with OXPs and having one is fun for a couple of evenings but that's it.

Having opponents who are too weak to cause harm, or avoiding them completely, turns the game into a tedious slog of carting cargo around. That's not fun for long either.

The reason this thread started was, I suspect, because I said two add-ons are not widely advertised because they are cheats. Perhaps I should have said "they are not widely promoted because the experienced authors know it will spoil the game if newbies use them as if they are standard equipment."

Some OXPs should come with a 'health warning':

Use of this OXP will completely unbalance the game and prevent it being fun to play for any extended time. The Oolite community recommends you use it only for testing, debugging and exploratory purposes, and avoid the temptation of using it with your day-to-day Commander.

[Smivs]

Of course Okti is right, and while I'm quite happy to share my opinions (often in a very forthright way) I understand and accept that others see things differently. Each to his own.
The fact is sometimes a 'cheat' can lead to a good thing. I mentioned Football (soccer) above. A game of skill that relies upon the players only using their feet (and bodies and heads) but not arms and hands to control the ball. One of the worst cheats in Football is to gain an unfair advantage by handling the ball.
That didn't stop William Webb Ellis, a pupil at Rugby School, from picking up the ball and running with it one day. Although the claim is contentious, the general belief is that this was the moment the game of Rugby was invented.
Now I'm not a Rugby fan, but even I have to accept that it is a fine game in its own right and a very popular one at that.
As for Oolite, well as I said I think in its Vanilla form it is a balanced, absorbing and most rewarding game. It has an elegant simplicity which surprisingly doesn't seem to limit it particularly. Any additions to it (other than purely cosmetic ones) are bound to affect it in some way.
As I enjoy the challenge I personally would not add in anything that makes it easier for me, and indeed two of the ten OXPs I routinely use tend to make the game a bit harder. And I always ask myself before adding a new OXP "Is this going to enhance and improve the basic game, or change it into something which isn't really Oolite anymore?"

Edit after seeing the several replies above

I must add that I do not use several of my own OXPs in normal play.
Wonderworm (an abomination as Okti points out. Made to show just how stupid things can get when you cheat!)
GalDrivePod (Not a cheat in any real sense, but i don't have them in my Ooniverse normally)
ExtraFuelTanks (The reserve tank is pushing the boundaries - the Auxiliary is a game changer. I don't use either)

I made them because I could and because I thought some people would like them. Far from imposing my wishes on others I'm quite happy to help people play the game in a way I wouldn't.

The funny thing is the longer I play Oolite, the less I want to add to it. It really is best played as intended in my opinion.

[Okti]

The other thing is helping the developers to find bugs by utilizing the ways provided by their excelent work. And I think LRS fixed couple of bugs in oolite helping to find the reason.

[Cody]

Dr Uberlove, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the OXPs!

[SandJ]

I have a ship that is basically a floating target.

There's your real problem. You are going to systems in an inappropriate ship. Use something with less cargo space and more firepower or stick to safe systems.

Changing the game so that you can carry vast amounts of cargo and never see a pirate is going to be fun for a couple of hours and that's that. If you're doing it as a way of upping your Credits to buy lots of toys to make it more fun, then fine. But if it makes you bored and move away from Oolilte before discovering how to avoid pirates and even take out packs of them in a slow trading ship, then when you go don't go saying "Oolite is boring after a few hours, you have to install power-up add-ons to be able to play, and it's dull anyway".

[Smivs]

SandJ has a good point, but oddly you could be doing yourself a favour.
I spent many happy months playing in a Python (I traded up from a Mk I Cobra!). It was a pretty Iron-Assed Python, but it was still a Python - it was slow and un-responsive, and with only two missiles and no Military Shields it was never going to strike fear in the hearts of the pirates.
But you know, it did! In the Mk I Cobby, then the Python I honed my skills. I learned how to shoot straight, without wasting shots. I became as good with the aft laser as the front. I learned how to evade missiles. I learned when it is best to just run away! In short I learned how to play the game. Best thing I ever did (except meet Mrs Smivs, and play drums in some cool bands, and have kids, and........)

[Dawn Trader]

Thank you to both Smivs and SandJ.....
You make the assumption that I am not a veteran..... I have many hrs of combat in my profile and flying my ship with minimal proection is an object lesson.... before I got my scanner and planner... I had many run ins with pirates at both safe and unsafe stations.
I know how to evade and lose my opponents however, I make it a point not to get a reputation. In my alter ego, I have arrived at my location only to meet 50+ grieving relatives of a pirate that I took out several system removed. My reputation seemed to get there before me... I have even had the sheriffs try to warn me off because of the reception committee that was waiting for me. as a trader, the only reputation I want is one of ontime , never fail delivery. Now, I will admit that every so often, I will look at the scanner and pickout a fugitive, pop in next to him, wait for him to notice and then I pop out leaving a very frustrated pirate behind. I like to call that laughing all the way to the bank. El Viejo can chuckle all he wants but I suspect he knows who my alter ego is... there is a big bottle of Tequila for you sky brother.

[Cody]

there is a big bottle of Tequila for you sky brother.

Jose Cuervo Reserva de la Familia?